What my father never told me.

Category Archives: Love & Relationships

Daddy’s love their daughter. The affection that they don’t get from their wives they get from their daughter. The changes you want to see in your wife you can actually make it happen in your daughter!!!

You can make her think like you. You can sell your ideology to her. You can cook her breakfast and tell the guy she goes out on her first date, that you would kill him, if he ever hurts her.

Daddy work his ass off. Daddy makes her believe life is beautiful. Daddy makes all her wishes come true. She can do whatever she wants, she can spend on anything she can think about.

Only Daddy doesn’t teach her how to think. Princess is limited by her thinking Princess doesn’t think that Daddy’s is becoming older. Princess doesn’t see Daddy is not working as much as he was. Daddy’s is not as strong as he used to be.

Princess beleives her Daddy is the greatest. She knows she won’t have to work for money because daddy dearest has made enough for her. This is a great world, but then hormones and puberty and youth take over the brain.

She falls in love, many times. She is heart broken, daddy is more heart broken. He watches his baby and stands by her side. He nurtures her, he plays the fool and gets his baby back on her feet. He curses the patriarchy and is at loss to understand the psyche of the man who hurt his angel.

After a lot many heartbreaks, princess marries the “mama’s boy”. Mama’s Boy thinks she is sex slave. Mama’s Boy marries her only to be disappointed. Mama’s Boy was expecting abundance to come with the princess. Mama’s Boy feels princess is burden. He takes upon himself to correct her. He uses the rod and doesn’t spare the child.

The school summer vacations, a good 2 months of nothing to do. Dad packed us, me, my mom, and occasionally my sister to Mangalore, where his two sisters lived. My mother’s uncle too lived close.

Dad’s extended family comprised his 2 elder sisters and their children. Each aunt had many children. In our wonderful language, we called our male cousins “Bhavji” and our female cousins as “Vahini”.

My Cousins

The custom of spending summer vacations in Mangalore started around age five and abandoned after I grew ten years old. These five summers are the liveliest of my life. My cousins who were much older and in their youth were great fun and unique. They took me to restaurants for Gadbad ice-creams and other food, told me fascinating stories. These cousins were my childhood heroes, they could climb trees and get me fresh coconut water. They could jump from a floor or more, and they climbed into well’s if a cricket ball fell into it.

The Food

Though both aunt’s and my mothers uncle lived around Mangalore, the character of the food varied. At the aunt who lived in Mangalore city there used to lot of fish for lunches and mangoes and jackfruits to eat for deserts. With the aunt in “Puthige” (a village near Mangalore) there used be lot dosa and chutney and a wonderful homemade pickle which tasted divine with watered rice. When we reached at my mothers uncle place in Polali, we got treated to a huge watermelon fresh from the fields. My mother’s uncle then caught a chicken roaming around freely in his house front-yard and screwed it’s neck. The half dead chicken is then dispatched to the ladies for cooking. Thin Rice wafers (called as Roti) is usual accompaniment with the chicken curry.

Toilet Matters

But there were troubles too, the greatest issue for a city slicker, was the lack of toilets inside the house. Being a shy child and not keen on being led by an elder to the field for my daily defecation. Most of the times a girl cousin escorted me into the open, who I accused of sneaking in to see my behind. Open defecation in the field tormented me, even though now I consider it as an extravagance. Later the aunts got into a rat race to get the first toilet built. The city aunt won. The game plan for the aunts was whoever builds an indoor toilet’s will make us city slicker more comfortable and hence get more time at their place. More time, means more ability to influence. I don’t think it worked, my mom spent extra stay time with the family who provided her the intoxicant of choice.

Houses

Both my aunts (fathers sister) houses were as different as apples & oranges. The elder aunt’s house had 2 or 3 other houses in front of them with a center courtyard. There was a beautiful temple in the courtyard where every evening all the residents of that houses sang aarti’s (devotional songs). This typical village house surrounded by paddy fields and coconut tress looked idyllic.

The city aunt’s house was on a hill. It had a narrow un-motorable approach road. We left the rickshaw down the main road and walked to the house. The front yard of the house had fruit trees like jackfruit, mangoes. I recall the big Jackfruit tree right in front of the house where we would put up chairs and sit. The back gate of the house led to barren hill where a solitude cashew tree stood. We ate those cashew fruits sometime.

Work and Education

Most the girls in the neighbours houses of the village aunt, used to make “bidi’s” – (an Indian cigarette without filter) and sell it to the local manufacturer for cash. It helped them support the household. The marked difference between the village aunt and the city aunt was that some of the children of the city aunt studied to become graduates. The less educated cousins moved to Bombay to earn and support the family back home. A few of them worked with my father in the factory.

Aunts

The older aunt was the like Queen bee, she made sure, they was money to feed all the mouths. She did a good job to push her relatives to work. The younger aunt aptly named “Sundari” (‘O’ beautiful) was more talkative and extrovert. She educated her kids and took pride in their success.

Relationships outgrowing in time

My father got divorced and re-married. The vacations to Mangalore stopped.

The place where I grew up, a place where I held my dad’s finger, and we would go about walking the busy markets. I would absorb the sights and the sound, while people would almost give him a salute.

I asked Dad, why do they salute you, he would say, some people think he is in the police. Dad was broad built and well over 6 feet tall, so I didn’t find that hard to believe then.

I loved the fact that he would get so much respect on the streets, and looking back at my life now when I walk the streets, people must be thinking what a loser this guy is? I mean these people don’t even know me. However, I don’t have that charismatic commanding presence which demands awe.

Goregaon, I was there today, had some work. After work, I reached the station on the west side, the memory of dad and me walking came back, I am holding his hand, I, being so much tired to climb those stairs to the bridge, and I would tell him, I am tired. Nevertheless, he kept walking, and I tried to pace up.

We did most of our shopping on the East side, like the fish and the vegetables. However, our lady doctor was on the west side. I wanted to find the doctor; I walked there, but seems there is now a tall building, couldn’t find her clinic.

Goregaon has changed and those sheltered days of holding my dads hand and walking will never come back. My heart was heavy at the loss of this larger than life person (Dad) , maybe if I had got mother’s love; I wouldn’t have made my Dad into so much of a hero. However, dad has to bear the brunt of hero worship, cause, there wasn’t any mother figure to hero worship or hold my hand and walk me around.

The child was not more than 6. He was looking at me repeatedly with hope. I wanted to take out something from my bag and give him something. But then I realised; I don’t have anything in my bag, not even a pen to offer.

I looked at his mother; she looked a bit disturbed. Someone who chose her dream but kept returning empty handed. I realised, if I offered anything to the child, the mother might accuse me of something and try to extort money. She looked that kind of lost, like a drug addict. She didn’t seem to be an addict, but she had the lost look.

The street boy approached the older man sitting next to me on the park bench. The elderly man tells the that he has some goodies in his bag, incidentally the old man knew the boy and his mother. The sweet kid got his stuff and thanked and backed off looking at me. I wondered why is he trying to please me?

The old man started talking to me, saying the mother is spoiling the child’s life. He says he tried to fix a job for the mother, but she prefers to roam around and doesn’t like her freedom to be curtailed, by a job.

The old man said, once a life goes off track it’s next to impossible to get life on tracks, suddenly I felt an eerie similarity between myself and the woman. I also don’t like to be tied down. The mother had left her husband for another man, he said. However, this new man she chose also didn’t have any money. He blamed the woman for choosing the wrong man again.

I got up and said to the elderly man; I have to get moving. The elderly man didn’t understand my abrupt urge to go and not want to listen to his story about the street kid and his mom.

It’s a bit scary, getting to know completely strange people on a park bench. Maybe it’s a trap for extortion or maybe he was just sharing his story. But mumbai you cannot trust totally.

She was never on my mind, but she was all over my life. My day started with her and it would end with her. Right from the walks to all the talks, this was not love, but companionship.

But companionship without love, how would it last? Is it convenience – “like what will I do with all the free time? I will go crazy. “

But it has it merits, it boosts your confidence and the companionship is good for health. It increases your appetite. You could travel as lovers and friends, without connecting and knowing each other.

Then it snapped. Something went wrong, like the brain got rewired over-night. Was the relationship so immaterial that I could wake up and walk away, dusting my hand’s off? Yes, I did it. It was never about me, I was an character in a play. I knew this was not real, it was acting.

But what about those in-convenient messy relationships? Those relationships you cant dust your hand’s off? Those messy relationships, you wonder if its on or off ?

These inconvenient relationship are like some road worker, sledge hammering your brain to create new neural pathways. You scream and plead, there is enough mess in my life, I don’t need a new one. You tell yourself, you have done it in the past, you could wake up one day without any residual feelings and walk away. But these messy relationships start defining you. It becomes part of your identity, a digital signature hardwired in your memory.

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p dir=”auto”>This stranglehold of the brain is of the heart. The heart likes messy, it like to bleed and weep and despair. It likes to cheat and feel guilty. It wants to forgive and start again.

We let our hearts take over our brain, the brain wants change, the heart wants permanency. We want relationships which would last and wouldn’t be easy to get out of.

Nowadays I don’t get influenced by Hindi movies, but when I was a kid, the only way for a new idea to take roots in my brain was via Hindi films, and mostly it was the special occasion of watching an Amitabh movie. I guess no other film has impacted me more than the movie Deewar.

Amitabh’s character Vijay in Deewar is how I modelled myself, along with a strong influence of Bruce Lee my other Hero. Our household wasn’t very religious, but someone in the house would light agarbatti and diya in the morning and evening at our house. I had nothing to do with it after I saw Amitabh blaming GOD for all the hardships his mother and he faced when he was a kid.

I also conveniently blamed the invisible Gods for all my childhood problems, cause my childhood wasn’t normal like other children in the neighbourhood, I couldn’t blend in.

Check out this scene from Deewar, its sounds almost funny now, and I cant bear to watch it.

Have you said to yourself “Man why does this happen to me all the time?”. Have you observed, how many close calls you had in life, I mean I could have been dead when I was eight years old. I had set up this lab on the balcony of my house, and I was at least getting one electric shock every day trying to become the next Einstein.

Yes, my childhood dream was to become a scientist, but my Dad thought I should become an Engineer and manage his business. So I did become an Engineer.

A couple of weeks back I was missing an old childhood friend Rajesh of mine, I mean we grew up like brothers, but then we lost touch, and a few days later I found Rajesh sitting at the table across me and sipping his coffee. We both recognised each other, but we didn’t talk.

I realised we weren’t kids now, I found him grumpy and felt it isn’t worth working on the old relationships now. Yes, you might say, “how cruel?”. Yes, I feel sometimes, I don’t have a heart, the cold-blooded way in which I manage to conduct myself.

But then again after a few days I meet another Rajesh, who tries to help me with some important work. Here my mind, starts talking to myself “ Woh, God compensated me with another Rajesh”

But hope you are getting the drift, all these coincidences happening to me, I am building a pattern, I am linking the first event “My remembering of my childhood friend” to the other 2 events.

I know, we all love connecting the dots…

But stop there, just don’t connect the dots and let it be! Trust me; you will save yourself a lot of bothers.

Everyone surely has one going for them; we cannot survive without an imaginary, fantastical long distance love affair. Can we?

The long nights spent on the telephone, the sexy voice which touches your soul, the lies we made up were the lies we told ourselves to survive our boredom and our hopeless situations.

We never had enough of each other; our love was insatiable and larger than any real life relationships around us. We wanted to come home to think about us.

Our real partners thought we were delusional, and they had the occasional outburst of insecurity, but then they knew what we were going through, as they were also in love with some Salman Khan of their dreams. Besides, long distance relationship are platonic, and our partners feel a particular kind of sadistic pleasure out of seeing us long for something which is not ours.

Baby, isn’t this how marriages survive the monogamy? A long distance loves affair during the middle age crisis. Security kills our wild spirit and needs for exploration & adventure, doesn’t it? This is certainly the best of both the worlds, isn’t it?

Her numerous photographs hidden in the secret folders in my phone would drive me crazy with longing; it would drive me to desperation. The wish to shorten the long distance to less than an arm’s length was the start of the break-up of the long distance relationship. In this passionate quest, all other relationships were going to be destroyed.

But better sense prevailed, the long distance relationship was kept at a distance so that the flame of romance would burn all life long.

This Question is a no brainer, everyone believes that reading is good; it makes you knowledgeable and erudite; it makes you a respectable bourgeois gentleman, it is what separates you from the lower ignorant class. But does it make you happy? Is it good for your relationships?

One of my dad’s friend was a prolific reader, the amount of books he had to give away, to make space for more books (though he used to live in a 3BHK) was a proof of his voracious appetite for books.

Once his wife remarked, that “Reading is a very selfish thing” and I believe she was talking from experience. I didn’t understand the seriousness of the statement then as I was a ten-year-old kid, but now I know what she means.

I have started avoiding all kinds of social situations and even relationships so I can be alone and read that is when I am not earning a living.

My reading is not as broad, I read about urbanisation as it helps me in my work, I read non-fiction and business books. I restrict myself to mostly Indian Authors. Recently I met a bookshop owner and he made me aware how much more I have to read, he showed me curated books from all over the world; he recommended a whole new genre in international authors. I bought so many books he recommended. I didn’t understand this greed in me, why do I need to read so much, where do I have the time?

You know, if you are interested in dating a girl, don’t give her Gifts or expensive jewellery, but spend your resources on something which you could do together. For example – A romantic dinner, or a picnic or go to play or a music concert, whatever but it should be something which she shouldn’t be able to consume alone.

But a person, whose only interest in Books, might get in trouble in a relationship, I mean reading means solitary confinement, it means years of introspection of oneself. It means an insatiable thirst for knowledge and information.

It may be that people who love books wish that they weren’t married, that they didn’t have children, and they had all the time for themselves to read all the books in the world. At least, I wished for it.

Maybe if all people in a family love books, then it wouldn’t be so much lonely for them, that would be a perfect family for a book lover. So if you love reading, I just hope that your reading is not at the expense of someone else’s loneliness.

There is a book by Junot Diaz called “This is how you lose her”, where the protagonist is so involved in enjoying his life by himself that he loses the love of his life.

As long as I have been conscious, I have always been in a car, either being driven when I was a minor or driving with someone, or driving alone.

I have driven a lot, most of the times alone, and lot many times with families and loved ones.

Driving with someone is a good opportunity to know someone, due to the circumstance of proximity, you and your companion end up talking and a kind of intimacy develops between you.

When the roads are never ending, you tend you slip into your inner consciousness. I have been aware of great compassion and love from my fellow companions during those long journeys.

Mostly my driving has been for work and only a couple of vacations. But I have had some revealing insights about my loved ones when driving. When I look back, I feel glad I took those rides with them as those 8/10 hours on the road, made me understand them much better.

Now I don’t drive, but I am looking forward to a trip with someone, somewhere on a beautiful, long winding roads, into the future.

As far as I remember, I was labelled as the “obedient child” a little bit early in life. An obedient child is aptly rewarded for good behaviour. Even as a child one tends to understand that one has to exhibit proper behaviour, which mostly meant “Just keep your stupid mouth shut”.

This enormous burden of a sweet boy label creates an extremely repressed young boy. The obedient child doesn’t get a chance to rebel; because of the following reasons

1) Complete denial of access to the outside world and interactions.
2) He is made entirely dependent on his parents.
3) By reiterating by action and words, that your parents can take care of all your problems.

I am not saying that this is all deliberate actions on the part of the parents, but it may be just how parents are, they want to control their creation. I hope though some enlightened parents know better than this?

I am no longer an obedient child; in fact, I have rejected the society as it is, I am one of the biggest critiques of societal norms and the superficial values it imposes so that it can make compliant citizens of everyone.

But being an armchair critique is one thing and fighting back is an entirely different ball game.

I have never learnt to fight back for my rights, because fighting back most of the time means hurting the very ones who said, they would protect you. Fighting back means telling the people you respect and sometimes even love, that they are hurting you.

Sometimes there is a such a thin line between what is rightfully yours and what’s not? It is like the predicament of Arjun who drops his weapons when given the task to eliminate his elders and loved ones.

Life is messy and it gets dirtier when faced with such a dilemma, but one has to fight and I hope I learn to fight, and always fight for the right cause.

I try my best to maintain my privacy, but some neighbours have left a mark on my mind.

For example –

The house next to me, here the noise begins during weekends; there is this handsome guy who brings in a new girl every weekend. I have no issues with that, after all, young people are supposed to be promiscuous, the only issue is that they somehow like to play loud music ( and sometimes moan and groan loudly) while having sex. A few times I have been woken in the middle of the night. Waking up in the midst of the night, will make anybody mad, I am no exception, so I gathered all my courage and knocked on the neighbours door asking them to turn the volume down low. A tall well-built half naked guy partially opened the door while I was mentally visualising getting beaten up, to my surprise he profusely apologised, promising to lower the music and I went back to sleep.

Then there is an uncle downstairs who always picks up my courier when I am not at home, but I just don’t understand why he is always changing his clothes with the door open and looks at me suggestively when I pass. NO!

But the neighbour who scares me most is this beautiful young girl upstairs, whenever she crosses me up in the stairs she looks at me and I feel she is going to jump on me and kiss me. She always tries to brush past me; It makes me wonder why does she like me? I wonder who she is and why she decks up so much and goes out late in the evening. Is she a bar dancer? She frightens me, because she is so beautiful that I wouldn’t be able to resist her, and that could have potentially dangerous consequences like a relationship. What she did next was freaked me out entirely, One weekend when I was blowing the music loud, I heard the bell ring, I checked from the keyhole, it was her. I panicked, and I didn’t open the door. But with a slowly beating heart, I kept on wondering for the next few days, why she had rung the bell?

Recently I met a friend after long time and while we were talking he told me that way back he did some Numerology on my name and said, “I see that your life is very extreme like you you will face extreme circumstances” what he meant was probably a lot of ups and lots of downs” Feels like a rollercoaster ride doesn’t it? But everyone’s life does feel like a rollercoaster ride, right? But maybe mine is more I don’t know.

That got me thinking

It’s quite true my life is a rollercoaster but more than Ups, I’m just going downhill but it’s a perspective of others and not mine.

So at this time I got into skateboarding you might ask what skateboarding has to do with extremes life ?

Disclaimer – skateboarding is primarily a juvenile activity.

The thing about skateboarding or long boarding is that when you’re going down you need less effort because you’re kicking with your feet and going down is also very fast and what will keep you on your board is your sense of balance. And to get the balance, I got a balance board where you stand on board with a roller below it, it is the best balance exercise I think which exists, the idea is to fall at home rather than fall while skateboarding on the road or in front of the people, you train yourself to balance.

So am I trying to physically control the extremes? Am I physically trying to control the downhill slide? Will the balance training translate in other parts of my life? These are mere analogies but somewhere everything is connected isn’t it?

I have no problems with extremes, but I think people who are close to me might find it really disorienting, when people see you going to extremes, some people jump off the rollercoasters, some people get on while the going is good, but generally it’s not a good thing I guess.

So I’ll be spending some time trying to balance my life as well as my board.

Day before yesterday, I made a statement for the first time in my life, when I met my sister and brother-in-law for my 4_ birthday celebrations.

I said “Money is my God and I dont believe in happiness in watching sunset in a beautiful scenic place” . My brother in law who is the most practical person I know off immediately understood and retorted “That, after all it takes money to travel to those exotic places to watch the beautiful sunset or sunrise and expereince that happiness”.

Flashback –

Going back say 30/35 years, I was a young kid, 7 or 10 year old, every time i told my mother I was hungry, she would just give give me the keys to the locker where there used to be lot of cash, you know that 5 Rs bundles back then? My mother was a raging alcoholic, she didnt cook at home during the day and only would cook for the evening when dad would be home, so the only recourse for her to solve my hunger was to send me w money to the nearest Udipi Hotel to fetch my masalsa dosa. I hated the fact that my mother wont cook for me, like other mothers did, I fell really sick with Jaundice eating those Masalsa Dosa everyday. After which my father imported a cousin home from mangalore to do the cooking.

Even with my father, who was quite sucessful in monetary terms could never spend any quality time talking to me or he never had time to take my tutions or take me out for fun, i think I saw my first circus when I was well in my teens.

With all the houses and the factories Dad set up, I thought, there was no quality of life for me. This was my perception that there was a lot of money at home, but then I realise, my father was stressed all the time, because he was always short of money to raise capital for his varied projects and had created substantial financial debts and he worked a 12/14 hour day, day in and day out, but that's his story.

I wonder sometimes, will we ever feel, we have enough money, so that we can nurture our loved ones or is it going to be a life of unfulfilled responsibilites because there was never enough money?

I wonder how people with complete financial security (if there is such thing as financial security) live their lives, are they better at dealing with their loved ones, or is it over indulgence with money which spoils their kids?

Up until now, I feel I have been living off my fathers assets, now it is time to make my own money and before that I need to learn to love money. I still dont know if chanting “Money is my God” a 1000 times a day will make me get over this childhood distaste(Hate) for money.

Memory is basically an idea or a perspective of yours. You might base it on your experiences, view some memories as pleasant and touching, while other memories as bitter. Now some may want to keep these memories locked in a vault, but this blogpost is for those who would rather plead amnesia.

Love thy children
Forget you have given birth to your child, forget the labour pains, forget all the tender moments, forget the child called you mama or papa, forget the child embracing you. Forget how much you were worried when the child was ill and you pleaded to God to take your life and nothing to happen to the child. Forget all those growing up days from baby to a gawky teen. Would you still love your child? Well, if you forget everything about your child, any child would be a child, and there would be no discrimination.

Love thy parents
Forget your parents taking you our for a movie, forget your parents putting up money so you could go to college, forget the cooking they did for you, forget that they nursed you back to health. Forget how secure you felt around them. Would you still love them? Think about it, rather don’t think.

Lover
Forget you think she is attractive, forget her voice, forget her hair, forget her eyes, forget how sensitive she is, forget how much you long for her, forget she exists. Would you still love her?

All our actions are based on the memories we have, think about all the discrimination we unknowingly commit in the name of protecting the ones we love. Just a idea, or you can forget about this blogpost.

Making a journey to the past, revisiting it. The journey to the past would be only constrained by the memories (of happiness and sadness).

reconstructing it with new adult perspectives and reinforcing the relationships which were meant to be broken and healing them by thought.

The past shouldn’t be treated like a trash can, it can be salvaged and re-aligned with your present and might just make the future richer.

So what are the tools we have to revisit the past. I am starting a dairy for each relationship, for each phase, for each venture in the past and reconstructing it with memory. I am writing non linearly, whatever comes to my mind. Do let me know if you have other tools to revisit the past. Maybe past life regression? Has it worked for you?

There is too much of a treasure left behind to let it go. It is a short life as we all say, nothing is worth losing.

I am a skeptic when words like intuition, magic and esoteric rituals are referred too.

It seems very loony to get involved in these stuff, but I have been greatly influenced by such people who believe in these stuff.

Now looking in retrospect I see signs of my childhood intuition coming true. While I was a kid, every time I used to travel to Bandra, my eyes would get tranfixed on a store called “Satguru’s ” on linking road. Now after 30 years I moved into a house which is opposite Satguru’s.

Again whenever I used to go to Nariman Point I would be very curious about NCPA , my parents never went to NCPA but I do feel extremely blessed whenever I am at NCPA (one of my most favourite place in Mumbai) .

Were these childhood sense of wonder just a sign about what the future holds for me. What if I was more aware of the subtle signs in the universe, would it have been easier for me to navigate this treacherous world with my own mental blue print.

Now I’m exercising my mind to back in time and explore those hidden groves of the memory lanes to find more clues for the treasure life awaits.

Do you have that space in your mind to accommodate other people’s difference of opinion. culture and habits?

Do people around you give you space to make new friends, do the people who love you really care or not if you are meeting new people and making new friends?

Friendship is the social currency which makes life worth living, helping people connect and make friends can be the noblest of deed which can outweigh a charitable donation or education, i think.

Help people make friends, give then space to learn the nuances of life through friendship, since friendship is the gentlest teacher. We all don’t want to go into our graves or holy fire with bitterness in our heart. Do we?